Solivagant
by lopsidedcities
Summary: Once upon a time, Peter Pevensie's wife began to see that her Happily Ever After had been stolen away.
1. Chapter 1

_Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it._ – C. S. Lewis

First – Descent

I.

The High King is a tall, strong man, and like his youthful brother, would be remarkably handsome had worry and responsibility not made their ponderous mark upon his face. His bland smile masks a mind whirring constantly in consideration of issues of jurisprudence, of diplomacy, of commerce, and his words leave his mouth only after they have been critically weighed against other worthy possibilities.

They are all like this, the Kings and Queens of this green land of Narnia.

He rises before dawn and retires long after the daily supper is over, staying at his desk to read over an entire treaty or settlement or charter by flickering candlelight like so many weary shopkeepers struggling with their daily bookkeeping. His wife does not care to recall the number of nights she has gone to bed and awoken with only a slight dent and some lingering warmth to show for his presence.

Peter is twenty-four.

He has adapted ages ago, like his brother and sisters, to this burden that settles heavily upon their shoulders. Narnia's desires have become his own, as have her triumphs and losses and well-being, and the Queen Consort teases him sometimes that he has always had a mistress with whom she cannot hope to compete with.

She remembers how impressed she was, like everyone else, by his kindness and his perceptiveness, and, as he caught her eye across the long table, how pleasing his eyes looked as he smiled, even if it was merely the polite smile he reserved for strangers. She noted how his thoughtful, educated speech contrasted with his tanned face and calloused hands – and saw that here was a man who was different from the slender young dandies at court who spoke endlessly of hunting and hawking and women and horses, a man that was set apart from other men in ways that were both obvious and indefinable.

During the masked ball on the eve of his departure from Archenland she made him laugh once, twice, many times, and it was intoxicating to meet his gaze. She had not been his wife yet – that would come a year later – and she remembers now as she eats breakfast alone, how she had only seen his blue eyes and his goodness – for above all he was so _good_ – and not sought to look deeper.

II.

She has read many, many books. In the beginning, it had been textbooks and encyclopaedias on the subject of Narnia as she sought to understand the land in which she had made her home, and later, the land to which her husband was so inexorably bound. The Queen Consort has never been the scholarly type, but she found comfort in the knowledge stored up in these dry, dusty tomes. In three years of marriage she learns more about history, geography, anthropology, language, and science than she had ever accumulated in a lifetime.

"Did you know," she tells her chambermaid one day, "that I have read one thousand books, one for each day of my time in Narnia."

The man who is her husband no longer has the time to seek her out and entertain her as he had once done, and as he trains with his men in the ring she sits in the corner of the library, remembering when she would see him from her window, reading under one of the trees in her father's garden, and abandon her lessons for the simple pleasure of being with him. More often than not he would read aloud for her benefit, and she would luxuriate in the unreserved discussions they had afterwards. Now she has learned to read alone.

It was after her miscarriage that she pursued medical textbooks, branching out to midwifery and ancient remedies as she sought within the soothing words a salve for the loss of a child she had begun to dream of, to name, and make solid, even if it was all in her mind.

When Peter left her bedside reluctantly but firmly, called away by urgent news, she hated him, just a little, as her empty womb throbbed like a beating heart. When he rode off to war the next day, Susan, eyes clear and dry, found her weeping in bed. She hated herself, just a little, after that.

III.

_Is it right,_ she sometimes thinks, _for a man to be closer to his brother than his wife?_ Two voices reside in her mind, and one chides the other for thinking such uncharitable thoughts. Peter and Edmund have faced death together, and she suspects that the bonds linking them have a strength and depth unlike that of a marriage vow (she tries not to consider that it might be _stronger_ or _deeper_). It would be petty and unworthy to begrudge the young King Edmund this bond that strengthens them both, but it galls her that he could sway her husband so easily in matters she cannot touch.

There are times in the night when he will awake with a shout or a gasp and she will lie still, pretending sleep as he mumbles and stirs and sits up in the bed, unwilling to look, as she has done so many times, straight into his eyes at a moment that he is most vulnerable and most open, and recognize nothing in his gaze. Yet it jars in her mind that with a smile, a quirk of the mouth or a flick of the eyes, his sisters may guess at his every thought, catch the unspoken ends of his words.

His siblings conspire to help him when he is incapable – or unwilling, to help himself. They coordinate their efforts like a well-trained team of hunting hounds, getting him to take a day's rest or bypassing his requests when they feel he is being stubborn and overprotective. Though he is High King, it is clear that they are not his lesser lieges.

IV.

Only after the miraculous birth of her firstborn child does she finds that there is no time to read. Peter insisted on a small army of servants and nannies, but she spends her days and nights with the babe by the cot in the nursery that has at last been put to use. As little Francesca grows and begins to recognize the sound of her voice and the look of her face, she returns to her books, and this time they are fairy-tales she reads, aloud. She remembers from her own childhood the stories of fragile, beautiful women inevitably finding their happy endings, and as she tells them to her own daughter and looks into the round blue eyes that are exactly like those of her father, she begins to wonder how profoundly she is skewering her child's perceptions, and how deep the damage will be.

V.

_Hello, how are you, good morning. Good afternoon, good evening. Goodnight. Perfect weather, what a fine day. The leaves are changing colour, look, Isabel. Yes, beautiful, Peter, they are truly magnificent. _

They do not talk anymore. Oh, yes, they speak - the chatter of a married couple discussing mundane things is, in fact, the only thing they do. But they don't have discussions anymore – where they can disagree or agree and laugh, or think and reflect. She tries not to mind it as much as she does. After all, there was a time when the sound of his voice, no matter what words they formed, set her heart pounding.

She wonders if he feels it too, this cooling of passion. It has been a while – a long while – since he even looked at her in that way, though she can blame this on tiredness and the recent war.

Sometimes when she lies awake beside his slumbering form she lets her mind drift to before. That evening he had tried to teach her a faun dance, taken her by the waist, saying, "This is how the young men will look at you when you dance," and looked into her eyes until she blushed and turned away, feeling keenly the heat of his fingers through the layers of her dress.

At balls she watches him dance with the wives and daughters and nieces of ambassadors and foreign lords, and she recognizes the glow in their eyes, the way they tilt their heads back and laugh at his murmured words. The feeling that sparks within her is not jealousy, but loss.

*

_(First of three parts)_

_I've read a lot of stories in this fandom where the original character heroine charms the pants off of either Peter or Edmund – sometimes both of them – and then after they've overcome a bunch of cheesy true love's obstacles they marry and everything's good for the rest of their lives. So I tried to look deeper into what the life of a High King's wife would actually be like, although I think it turned out a bit more depressing than I thought...  
_

_Pass or fail? Leave your thoughts :)_


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

"It's Peter," Susan said. Her eyes were red. "His ship…"

Isabel let her voice wash over her. The words _sea storm_ and _night_ and _drowned_ floated in the air, meaningless.

Peter's latest letter had arrived only two days ago, a page and a half of his observations of the Islands and their people, of his hopes for increasing trade and stamping out the slavery and pirating that ran rampant in the beautiful waters in which he now sailed. It had ended with his typical, oh-so serious affirmation of love.

Heart pounding, limbs tingling, she tried to speak. And then a hand was on her shoulder, and she found her nose buried in Susan's long hair. When Susan pulled back, Isabel felt moisture on her cheeks. Whose tears were they?

_If I don't say it, it won't be true._

The world was crashing, tilting, like the sea on dark stormy nights. Never again – his laughter, his smile, the touch of his hands, the smell of his skin – all of that, vanished in a single instant. The sun was blotted out and dimmed. Earth shifting beneath her feet. Something was squeezing her chest, and when she raised her hand to her heart she saw that it was shaking.

"I can't," she choked out. Isabel had meant to say _I can't remember the last thing I said to him_, but all that came out were the first two words, a desperate plea.

* * *

She still dreamt of her husband, nearly every night. Sometimes he appeared as he had been when she last saw him; the wind ruffling his hair, laughter in his eyes as he prepared to board the ship and she made some parting jest. Those were the bitterest nights, when she woke in the dark, fumbling for something in the too-large space beside her, so sure that the previous weeks had all been a terrible dream.

And sometimes she sat up in the bed and screamed, her mind filled with the sight of his body drifting in blue-green water, his face blank and torn, eyes etched by horrifying sights, the blue turned to a muddy gray, the gray of death and desolation. His mouth would be open, as if there was one last thing he had forgotten to say, except the current swept him away, down into the deep and the cold where silence and night reigned over all.

Every time she would stumble to her daughter's crib, where Francesca lay in peace. She would look at her daughter's long eyelashes and slow rise and fall of chest until a measure of peace returned to her.

_Ours_, she thought in such moments, _a part of you whole and thriving. It is enough._

* * *

"You may not like what I am about to say," Edmund had told her. One night he had found her weeping, and told her some tale about their first winter, when Peter had slipped while skating, and turned her tears to laughter. Thereafter she went to him in those long days when loneliness stretched out like a dark road before her, and listen to him speak.

In the course of the long evenings they spent talking, he spoke of their childhood, of the golden boy who had been their mother's favourite (no hint of emotion but for a clenching of his teeth), and of the hazy years growing up in a distant land before they had become kings and queens. What emerged was a picture of the boy who had been her husband before she knew him; stubborn, proud, serious and hard-working, an infuriating brother and a natural leader. And here and there Isabel saw a glimpse of Edmund; resentful and worshipful at once, their clashes corrosive still after so many years.

"Don't stop," she would always say, or "Go on, I want to know," whenever Edmund hesitated before he said something not entirely complimentary of his brother. The memories Edmund had of Peter were crystal-clear and rarely sentimental; besides, he was an excellent story-teller. Listening to him brought her a peace she suspected was very like to healing.

Tonight the wine was drained until only the dregs remained, and their meal lay cold and sticky on her plate. Edmund stifled a yawn, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. The gesture made something protective and somehow maternal stir within her.

"Thank you," she said reluctantly. "Please don't stay up too late."

"Not a chance," he said, following her to the door. His eyes told her he was sorry to see her go.

"I mean it. Are you still having bad dreams?"

Gaze flickering, he said: "They don't mean anything."

She reached for him, touched his hand. "I do, too. It's as if he was here again, and then when I wake up he's gone. Every night."

"I never thought it would be like this." His voice was low.

He had told her that when they had spoken of death they had both assumed it would be on the battlefield somewhere, by sword or lance or tooth and claw. Not by the whim of fortune, by sharp rocks jutting out of an unforgiving sea.

She shivered. "Neither did I." Thought with that familiar falling sensation of their wedding day, when they had stood beneath the warm sky and sun and sworn to each other eternal oaths. In the end, they had only been words.

"Can I ask you a question?" he said.

"Yes."

"Are you scared?"

"Of the future?"

"Of never seeing him again."

Such longing in his voice. She thought of catechisms learned in childhood, of gazing out to sea to look for a land beyond the reach of her eye. Of the immeasurable space that lay between the living and the dead.

"Yes," she whispered. And then:

"Edmund. Do you think there is a heaven or hell? That Paradise awaits us?"

"I don't think about it as much as I should," he admitted. "I'm not sure that it matters, when there's the same work to be done, no matter what awaits us."

She was surprised. In all their time together they had never spoken of Aslan, whose land it was said the good and valorous went to after they had passed on.

"Not even –"

"If there is a heaven or hell," he said, "they are here, on earth. All three at once."

* * *

Winter came early that year, and they were all of them kept busy by a wave of sickness that swept through the castle. Edmund escaped the cough that overtook his sisters and his brother's widow.

Still, he was kept busy by his duties. And then one cold night, Francesca ran away. Everyone in the castle was set to searching for the lost princess. She could not be found in the kitchens, or the courtyard, or the gardens, or the orchards, which were all her favourite places. It was beginning to rain icy sleet, and Edmund felt a chill run down his spine at the thought of his niece buried beneath purest snow, cheeks cold, breath vanished. The rain had washed away her scent, puzzling even their best bloodhounds.

_What would a young child do on such a night?_ Edmund wondered. _Where would she go? Who would she look to in the darkness that was already falling?_

He knew, and it was his own feet that took him along a path he had neglected for nearly half a year. The sanctuary was dark and empty, the coloured glass embedded in its ceiling drumming with the beat of the rain. Shadows waited in the corners, and there was a hush, like an expectant breath.

"Is anyone here?" he called.

Silence, but for the echoes of his own voice. Once this place would have given him the greatest of comforts. Now it made him uneasy to look upon the golden lion's face, for so long as familiar to him as his own heart.

"It's me, darling," he said. "Don't be afraid."

_Enough_, he told himself. It was time to leave.

From far above him came the roll of thunder, except that for a second it almost sounded like something – someone – roaring. A shiver ran down his spine like cold water. And then lightning flashed far above him, flooding the sanctuary with light and movement. It took a moment for him to feel it. Something, a change in the air, a shifting of the darkness, and he turned around, nameless hope mixing with dread in his pounding chest.

There was no one there.

"Damn you," he shouted, slamming his fist against the wall. A sharp pain lanced up his arm and he raised his bloody hand to his eyes. He swore again. He had not cried since he was young, had not wept even when they had received the news of his brother. Yet now tears of rage blurred his vision. Angrily he wiped them away.

When he looked up, he was staring into a pair of wild golden eyes.

A breeze rippled along his face and neck, smelling of rain and soil, of something wild and alive and growing.

"Aslan," Edmund whispered, and the name was strange and familiar and terrible and wonderful at once.

"My son," said the lion in a voice as sad as if he had been the one weeping.

So tightly had he clenched his fists that his nails dug into his skin. The pain was sharp and welcome. "Where is she?"

"Your niece is safe."

Edmund found that he was trembling. A part of him, the part that noted the dull pain emanating from his hand, noted that Aslan's mane was dry and full despite the rain outside. He knew that Aslan was waiting for him to speak. But now that they stood face to face all the things he had wanted to say withered away.

"Why?" asked Edmund.

"Why did the storm hit at the exact moment your brother's ship was most vulnerable? Why did the ship not hold, and was instead dashed against the rocks, sending forty-two souls down in to the depths of the ocean? Why was he torn away from you so suddenly? Is that what you ask of me?"

"No, I –" Edmund shook his head in anguish. The right words would not come. "I looked for you."

"And what did you find?"

"Not you. Not when I needed you."

"Not when it seemed as though the world was crashing down about your shoulders," said Aslan, and he stepped forward until they were so close Edmund could feel his warm breath on his skin. He had not realized how cold he was. There was something there, something hovering on the edge of his memory, a half-remembered dream of someone tall opening his arms to embrace him.

"And now, child?" asked Aslan.

"Will I see him again," he began, voice shaking.

"I know," said Aslan quietly. "This grief is hard."

"Aslan, I can't –"

"I know," said the great lion again. Those great golden eyes shone with sorrow and love.

Above them in the night the rain fell and thunder roared and lightning flashed, and something inside him was breaking, dissolving. He thought of his brother and the uncountable ways he had loved him and hated him, of the broken promise of endless summer days, the lifetime that should have stretched before the four of them.

And in a voice as low as the rolling of thunder: "I know."

"Oh, Aslan." He buried himself in the golden fur.

.

On his way back to the castle, he met a sodden figure on the empty garden path. In all the commotion, no one had noticed that the Queen Consort was no longer in bed.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. Her eyes were bright and feverish as only the ill possessed.

"I heard…" She dissolved into a fit of coughing.

"Francesca is safe. We've found her. Please, go inside and we'll talk."

"Oh, thank goodness." She brought her hands to her mouth, reached for his hand. Her touch burned of fever. "You're hurt."

"Go. Now," he said frantically, taking hold of her shoulders and pushing her in the opposite direction. "The doctor said you could _die_, don't you understand?"

"What happened?"

The skin had split when he smashed it against the door, and blood mingled with rain to make a spectacular rosy bloom on the white of his sleeve. But the pain was already faint and distant.

"It's better than it looks."

"You always say that, Peter," she murmured.

For a moment she said nothing, eyes downcast, and then they flicked up in a panic, skimming over his features. "Edmund," she breathed, "I meant _Edmund_. I… I wasn't thinking, forgive me."

He let out the breath he had been holding. "There's nothing to forgive. Now, _come on_."

* * *

It was Christmas, and as per tradition his older sister sat them down to dinner, though it was more subdued than in other years. Francesca was allowed a sip of champagne before being bundled off to bedtime, her mother excusing herself in turn. Shortly after Lucy said she was going out for a walk to clear her head, taking Tumnus with her. Susan, sighing, announced that she was going to bed.

"Will you be alright?" Susan asked him very quietly before she left, a hand on his shoulder. Before she might have stroked his hair, as their mother used to do. Now everything was different.

"Yes, I think so."

"Good."

"Something strange happened today, Su. I was at the stables, and a newborn colt tottered up to me and put his nose in my hand. He was looking for treats, I suppose. His nose was cool and moist and he had such dark, limpid eyes. I was looking at him and then for a moment I was happy, really, perfectly, happy."

He had forgotten how it felt, not to think about his brother every hour of every day. The perfection of that moment in the stables lingered in his mind still, a flash of dazzling joy.

She smiled wearily. "Good. Peter would have been glad."

"And you, sister?"

Susan kissed his cheek. "Do not worry about me. Goodnight, brother. Merry Christmas."

"May the Lion watch over you."

"And you."

He downed the rest of his glass and returned to his chambers. The castle was dark and quiet at night, and he nodded to the guards as he passed them in the hall. Along the way he paused at an open courtyard that led to an enlarged balcony overlooking the city lying at the foot of Cair Paravel.

A woman stood there, looking out over the edge. Her back was to him, and the skin on her neck glowed in the moonlight. Her shining hair was bound up in a crystal hairnet. She turned at his approach, and the sight of the tears that glistened on her cheeks sent a strange jolt of pain mixed with sweetness into his stomach.

"Listen," Isabel said, "they're still singing."

From far below came the faint, clear sound of old, familiar Christmas carols.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" She was shivering. Gooseflesh stood out on her skin, and automatically he took off his coat and stepped forward to wrap it around her shoulders. As he did, she put both her hands around his waist and held him there.

"Will you honour me with a dance?" she asked. So that was what she wanted.

"I'm a terrible dancer," he demurred. His voice came out lower and rougher than he had expected. She gave him a smile as sweet and sad as the one his brother must have fallen in love with.

"Just once," she said. "Before the song ends."

Isabel took his arm and placed it around her waist, and then she held his other hand and placed her own hand in it, entwining their fingers. She stepped up to him. The night air was cold but very clear, and above him the stars shone peacefully, sparkling white and yellow and blue. The sweet tang of champagne lingered in his mouth, mingling with the perfume of her hair, and he knew then that the feeling would be with him for the rest of his life.

When the music faded away, Isabel whispered, "Merry Christmas." He didn't let go. They stood hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, close, so very close, and then she lifted her head. For a long moment the world shrank to a pair of brown eyes. After, he couldn't recall who moved first, only remembered the tilt of her jaw and the heat of her skin. She tasted sweet and salty at once, joy mixed in with sorrow, and a heavy, burning sensation slid down his throat, setting him afire.

* * *

_Whoo-ee it's been a while hasn't it... re-wrote this part in a burst of boredom! Let me know what you think._


	3. Chapter 3

"Mother."

Peter opened his eyes and saw that night had descended. Something heavy and warm lay on the lower part of his legs. An enormous wolf, lips drawn back in a snarl, dead. Peter tried to lift its heavy weight. He rolled to the side, dented armour and all, and dragged himself from under the body. A painful prickling rushed down his legs like fire, but that was fine. A lesson he had long ago learned: any feeling is better than none.

Somewhere, a voice pleaded for its mother.

He rose, armour creaking like old bones. Bodies were scattered around him: wolf, men, creatures so misshapen by violence he could no longer tell. Where was his brother? Where were his men?

"Mother," croaked a shape that lay not twenty feet away. Peter crawled towards it on hands and knees, and saw that it was a wolf. Someone had slashed into its chest and neck, and from these deep cuts its life's blood was draining away.

"Wolfsbane," the wolf gasped. "Water. I beg of thee..."

He was a youth, Peter saw, by his dark, downy fur. Not very long ago he had frolicked at his mother's knee with his brothers and sisters, play acting at war, eager and ignorant. A child. Now the pupils of his amber eyes were dilated with fear and pain. It could easily have been his own sword, Peter thought, and his own hand, that had done the damage.

"Art thou glad?" asked the wolf, gaze struggling to focus upon his face. "Art thou glad of what thou hast wrought, Peter the Wolf Killer?"

In the heat of battle, Peter would have torn out his throat and rejoiced. Now there was only exhaustion.

"No," he replied wearily. _I'm not._ Before the words could leave his mouth he looked down again, and saw that it was not a wolf who lay dying at his feet but a man, a man barely out of boyhood, the tattered standard of the golden lion wrapped about him like a shroud.

_NO!_

His heart seemed about to burst when he woke in the darkness of his bedroom, cheeks wet with tears.

Beside him, his wife was shaking him.

"What is it?" she asked. "You cried out. Another nightmare?"

Discomfiture flooded him. To have her see him like this was… unseemly. Unkingly.

"I did not mean to wake you."

"Tell me."

His breath, when he drew it, rattled. "He was dying. In my arms."

"Who?" she whispered.

"Ed. It was so real, I…"

She froze. "Only a dream. They hold no power over us."

He admired her certainty. Yet how could a woman who had never known hatred or fear understand the horrors of war?

"Sleep," she murmured, hand on his brow like a nurse. He caught hold of her wrist, pressed it to his lips, held it. Warm skin, dry and fragrant to the touch. And beneath that there was her throbbing pulse. Her body moved beneath the thin material of her summer shift. Whole, sleek, glowing with health. Alive. Still as lovely, to his eyes, as the day he first saw her.

"What do you want to remember?"

When he had first returned, they'd played this game, sewing up the ragged holes in his memory. _Ask me anything_, she'd said, _and we'll relearn it together_.

"It's the future that interests me now, not the past," he said gently.

"You are not yet twenty-seven. Your future is bright and endless – you've been given a second chance. We all have. When you came back…"

"Yes?"

"It was as though everything was right again… as if we had all been forgiven for our sins. A dream I'd had a thousand times, come true."

"A good dream, then. I wish I had more of those."

He thinks of the sea and a golden beach and the breeze through his hair, weightless for the lack of a crown.

"What are you thinking, my love?"

"Nothing." And everything.

"Shall I get water?" she asked, uncertainty colouring her voice.

"No. Please, go back to sleep. I'm sorry to have disturbed you."

He reached for the small bottle at his night desk. When it was unstoppered, a sweet, flowery scent filled the air.

Isabel hesitated. "The doctor said not to take too much."

"I know what he said."

She bit her lip and watched in silence as he swallowed. Dreamless sleep came to him uneasily.

* * *

Wind. Water, cold and deep and black. This was his world, the way it had always been, would always be until the end of time. The water pulled on the heavy leather of his coat, sucked on his shoes until they slipped free, or perhaps he had kicked them off – kicking, kicking for his life while the storm raged above him, silence below. And all the while his men drowned about him.

He dreamt that a dolphin, friendly and cheerful with a set of familiar golden eyes, nudged him, inch by inch to shore. When he woke, chest sore, throat raw, sunburnt and immobile, he remembered one thing: his name. That was the word he uttered to the woman who eventually found him, she of hair as radiant as sunlight and eyes that reflected the sea perfectly. He would never tell his wife of those peaceful, perfect months he spent with the woman who found him.

(No worrying about diplomatic relations or veiled threats of war or import taxes or whatever trouble the giants were stirring up now. Had he not asked for this? In the darkest of days, had he not wanted it?)

It came back in fragments, disjointed flashes of two boys and two girls and an eternal winter. Of cold and ice, blood and fire, of a castle by the sea and always, always, the distant roaring of some great beast. One day he stumbled upon a mangled piece of metal half-buried in the sand. Its weight familiar and unsettling. A crown, barely recognizable. His crown. The world tilted, and he realized then that it had been askew all along.

_High King_. He who they call Magnificent. Wolfsbane.

Narnia. Home.

* * *

His subjects call him Just, but it was only that he understood the necessity of balance, and kept it so well. Fire and water and sky and earth; all of these made up the wild heart of Narnia, and all together must coexist uneasily. Aslan knew that, knew it before four bored children ever decided to play a game and a girl ever thought to hide in a wardrobe.

When his brother had come back, it felt as though he – all of them – had stepped out of some long dream. The world was no longer askew. And the hope was that everything returned to what it had been before. Edmund was glad to have his brother back. Never mind that Peter was whip thin, nearly unrecognizable, and indefinably different. So much so that his own daughter did not recognize him at first. Hardship in those long months he had been lost had stripped him of any lingering softness.

And there was the matter of Isabel. Maddening, intoxicating, impossible to forget that he had touched every part of her; impossible to ignore, when he could still tell what she was thinking through her every miniscule change in expression; and yet now they were barely better than strangers. Was it abominable that the woman who haunted his nights was also the one who slept by his brother's side? Was it a betrayal of the heart?

Edmund would never ask, could never take, even if freely, willingly given. It would not be right; it would be sinful. The maxim his father passed along to the both of them remained long after the memory of his face had faded.

_Honour your family. Remember your duty to your country and your people. And do not forget the price of freedom._

Once he had forgotten, but only once. In the bitterest cold of winter nights the old scar throbs in rhythm with the traitor's heart Jadis of Charn meant to carve out.

A king's oaths are nothing to blood. This loyalty – hard-won, blood-drenched, as deep as the depths of his own heart – will bind them in this life and follow them to whatever lies beyond. Always, forever.

* * *

The queen found him sitting on his throne. The hall was cold and silent, black and grey in the moonlight. No laughter, no voices, not now.

"You've still got your king's face on, brother."

"Susan."

She put a gentle hand on his shoulder and he smiled. His sister was beautiful. Alone of all his siblings, Peter remembered their mother's face. Now it looked back at him like a living memory, deep blue eyes and red lips framed by dark wavy hair.

"What are you thinking of?"

"Nothing. Everything," he amended. "I couldn't sleep. And you, sister?"

She sighed. "The same."

When they were very young, she used to crawl into his bed, and more often than not Edmund and Lucy would join them. The four of them squished together, and then their mother would tell them a story until the giggles died down. In the morning he'd find that his parents had carried off his sisters to their own room as they snored. She had been his first companion, his first shadow. And then their father had gone off to war, and he had stood back and watched her grow up so quickly, proud and a little mystified.

"He is the one for me," Susan had said with such certainty. There was no trace of the little girl who'd begged him to play princess and dragons with her. She was a flower blossomed into womanhood, lush and lovely. "I want him."

"Rabadash is bad news," Edmund had warned him, out of Susan's earshot. His brother had returned from a hunting trip with the Prince sour-tempered and grim. "Our sister can only see his face and his sweet words and not the arrogant little shit hiding behind his father's armies."

"He wants me to come to Tashbaan with him. He wants to show me his home, his people."

Peter studied her. "And he says he loves you."

"Yes," she whispered, eyes sparkling. "Yes, yes, yes."

Oh, he thought.

"By your leave, Peter, I would go with him."

The thought of Rabadash touching his sister made Peter's skin crawl. Still, what better way to forge an alliance with Calormene than with oaths, with the mixing of blood? Four thrones, four children.

When he was younger, he might have forbade the match, might have severed the growing attraction between Susan and the haughty princeling the moment he'd seen it take root. Yes, love was romantic and exciting and grand. He'd read the poems, heard the ballads, remembered quite clearly what it felt like to be in love. Before Isabel there'd been Lady Alia and Princess Berenice and the lovely Cassandra, among others. Beautiful and charming with impeccable manners, all of them. Just like Rabadash.

But what were beauty and charm to kindness, to wit, sharp as the sword he wielded himself? And the possession of a shrewd, careful tact that would have made Isabel an excellent diplomat and most certainly a worthwhile consort. It had never been hard for Peter to fall in love. That she was the favourite niece of the King of Archenland had helped. And time was ticking, as his advisors delighted in remind him. Another adage he heard many times in those early days – a kingdom without an heir was a kingdom in peril.

Yes, love was grand, he wanted to tell his sister, but marriage was a different enterprise. And in something as intricate as the running of a kingdom, true love was a gift, a lucky surprise.

Four thrones, one child.

"Edmund will accompany you," he told her, "and Lord Peridan. He knows Calormene and its people. You will always be amongst friends."

"My dear brother," she murmured happily, hugging him tight.

A brother would not allow his sister to marry such a man. A king must do what is best for the realm.

And to the north, war was brewing.

* * *

Tenderness has never come easily to Peter. And now in heavy helm, his armour glinting in the morning sun and that great steel sword at his side, he would say that a commander of war can ill afford softness. The truth is that his men are watching.

Isabel kisses him for good fortune, a bright smile on her face. A happy memory for hard times. But he sees, as he has always done, and cups her cheek briefly, wordlessly. Bids his daughter, who is growing as fast as a weed, a goodbye as cheerful as she is solemn.

But duty calls. She watches his retreating back and reminds herself: it is the lot of women to wait, to guard and tend hearth and home until their men return. _If_ they return, whispers the little voice in the back of her mind.

"Your father is fighting for freedom," she tells her daughter instead, "and he's going to give those wicked giants a good trouncing." That was the way she usually told bedtime stories, playfully and oh so black-and-white, so perhaps it is to be expected that she only stares at her, waiting for the happy ending.

Years later, she would hold tightly to the memory of that goodbye. A single, perfect moment in the chaos that followed in the years to come. The tale of the white stag and the four kings and queens vanishing into thin air one merry winter day would already be proscribed in the books of history by the time Francesca assumed the throne at the tender age of nine – the sole heir of a vast empire, a herald to the ending of the Golden Age. Although no one quite knew it yet.

And Isabel mourned for the man she had lost long ago.


End file.
